I knew I should leave. But the need to find out more about the guy was too overwhelming to resist. Pasting a Good Samaritan look on my face, I approached him.
He turned toward me, his eyes cool and guarded. “Are you the one who reported the kids?” Kids came out “kidtz.” He had a slight accent, German or Slavic. He was medium height and wiry, maybe in his late thirties, with skin that was a tanning-booth caramel all wrong for his pale eyes and light hair. He hadn’t bothered to put on a jacket; he wore a white lab coat over his shirt and pants. A whiff of something antiseptic-smelling drifted off his clothes. The name tag on his lanyard read Alex Petrov, MD, Anesthesiology.
He was Green Hoodie. No doubt in my mind.
He frowned at me and I realized that he was waiting for my answer.
“Yes, I saw them,” I said. “Two boys.”
“And what was it they were doing?” There it was again, the perfect English underlaid with a sibilant hiss, the wh in “what” sounding a bit like fw. Polish or Russian, I thought.
“I think they were trying to steal your scooter.”
“Well, what did they look like?” His voice took on a badgering edge. His mouth was small, his lips paper thin. You’d think that with all that collagen lying around in a plastic surgery clinic someone could have injected him a fuller pair of lips.
The trick to lying, I’d discovered, was to keep it vague. Details make people suspicious. “Sorry—I wasn’t really paying attention.”
We looked at each other and a chill skittered down my spine. My gut was ordering me to leave, right now!
“I am grateful to you for coming forward.” He didn’t sound the least bit grateful. “May I inquire your name?”
“My name?” Buying time by acting stupid usually worked.
His mouth tightened to a slash. His ears were turning red from cold. “Yes.”
“Oh. Vanessa Vonnerjohn.”
“And you are a client here, that is correct?”
He was like a cobra, his pale eyes with their tiny pupils hypnotic, and his ranking on the scare-o-meter was ratcheting up by the second. Was this the man who had strangled Rhonda Cromwell?
“Look, I’d love to stay and chat, but I gotta go.” Somehow I managed to wrench my eyeballs away from his. “Stuff to do, skin to exfoliate, you know how it is.”
My heart was pounding as I beat a hasty retreat to Pig. I started the car and drove quickly out of the lot. Alex Petrov stood by his motor scooter, watching me. And—oh, good thinking Maguire; as usual you didn’t plan ahead—he was checking out my license plate.
He was still watching as I drove out of the lot and into the street. Using my ex-mother-in-law’s name was the flimsiest of tricks. All he had to do was track down the form I’d filled out in Kennison’s office to discover my real name, my address—even my blood type.
He didn’t know I’d seen him break in to Rhonda’s house; he had no reason to want to harm me, I reasoned. But I’d had the chilling feeling that Petrov had somehow been sucking all the secrets out of my mind. I’d attracted the attention of a guy who looked like he kept a collection of pickled human ears in his secret laboratory.
But if he found out my name, I reassured myself, I also knew his name, and Mazie Maguire, barista slash private investigator, was going to Google the hell out of Alex Petrov.
Chapter Twenty-five
God couldn’t be everywhere at once, so She invented girlfriends.
—Maguire’s Maxims
“Sorry I’m late,” I said, hurrying into Hottie Latte.
“Just get your clothes off,” Juju snapped. “We’re swamped.” She held out a hot pink bustier with matching hipster briefs and strappy high-heeled sandals. “Wear this. How come you’re late?”
“I was at the Kennison Clinic—”
Juju’s eyes widened. “You getting boobs?”
“No.” I dashed into the employee restroom and started stripping, talking to Juju through the door. “You remember I told you about Green Hoodie?”
Even through three inches of door I could sense Juju rolling her eyes. “Green Hoodie, Green Hoodie, let me think. Wait—would that by any chance be all you talked about the last three days?”
“I found him, Juju. He’s a doctor!”
“Shut up!” I could hear multisclamations—dozens of exclamation points at the end of that sentence.
“I went to the clinic because Jared Kennison—”
“Dr. Delicious?”
“Umm, yeah.” I pulled on the bikini briefs. Briefs, ha! These things were so brief they should be called nanoseconds. “Anyway, he offered to do some work on my scar.”
“What scar?”
“The one on my face, Mister Magoo.”
“You got a scar on your face?”
“How could you not see it? I’m talking about the thing that ate Milwaukee.” I wrestled on the bustier, whose lacey appearance was deceptive; it possessed the ribcrushing power of a boa constrictor. As I fastened up its millions of tiny snaps, I could feel my kidneys squashing in next to my lungs, while my bumpers popped up in 3-D Sensurround. “Jared wanted to take a look at the scar.”
“Don’t say anything for a second, okay? I want to get a clear picture of this in my mind first. Did he make you get naked? Were you forced to lie down on one of those little exam tables? Did he palpitate your—”
“Stop it! I kept my clothes on the whole time.”
“Damn, girl, that’s no fun.”
“He said my scar might turn cancerous some day and eat my brains.”
“So he’s going to fix it?”
I leaned one hand against the top of the toilet so I could pull on my heels. “No, I can kiss my brain goodbye. Can’t afford the surgery.”
“We could do a fund-raiser for you! Put jars with coin slots near the cash register—”
“Forget it.” If someone was going to donate a couple thousand dollars toward excising parts of my body, they could start with my belly flab. I studied my reflection in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. Some of my goose bumps were bigger than my bazooms.
I told Juju about Alex Petrov in between clearing tables, waiting on customers, and brewing drinks. I flubbed orders, bumped into tables, and added salt to a peppermint mocha. My body was on automatic pilot while my brain was in hamster wheel mode, spinning theories like mad.
“You all set for tonight, Mazie?” Samantha asked, passing me with a tray of dirty dishes.
“Set for what?” I asked distractedly.
“Hunk-a-rama.”
“Oh, right.” I vaguely remembered Juju mentioning that she’d bought tickets for all of us to some male strip show. “I’m not going.”
Samantha reacted as though I’d just said I liked to twist the heads off live chickens. “Of course you’re going. You can’t miss Hunk-a-rama.”
Watch me, I thought grimly.
When it was time for my break, I choked down a cinnamon roll, washed it down with a milk, wiped the sticky goo off my fingers, and slid into the chair in front of Juju’s computer. The computer was strictly reserved for company business, but Juju, recognizing that this was an emergency, told me to help myself.
Alex Petrov, I typed, and thousands of entries came up, lots of them with Cyrillic characters. Must be a common Slavic name.
Alex Petrov, MD, I tried. Still dozens of entrants. I scowled at the screen, dreading the prospect of checking every entry.
“Let me.” Juju spoke around the bagel clamped in her teeth. She reached over and typed in Alex Petrov, Kennison Clinic.
Pay dirt! Dozens of entries popped up, all of them newspaper articles. The first one was a Milwaukee Journal piece dated January 10, three years ago. College Student Missing, the headline read.
The search continues for eighteen-year-old Tippi Lennox, a student at Alverno College in Milwaukee. She was last seen entering a drugstore on North Fourteenth and Walnut Street the afternoon of January 7 and has not been seen since. Her dormitory roommate reported her miss
ing when she had not returned overnight.
I shifted my attention to the photo that accompanied the article. Tippi Lennox was pretty, with wide, trusting eyes, long brown hair, and a slight double chin that hadn’t quite been airbrushed out.
According to Ms. Lennox’s parents, their daughter had been admitted to the Kennison Clinic on the morning of January 7 for minor surgery. She was released from the clinic that afternoon, then took a cab to a Walgreens Drugs to have a prescription filled.
“Tippi Lennox!” Juju breathed.
I looked up at her. “You know about this?”
Juju stared at me. “Everyone knows about Tippi Lennox. One of those great unsolved mysteries.”
“Three years ago I was a guest of the state. No TV or Internet.”
“Well, this girl just vanished. She was from a wealthy suburban family, but she went to a gang-infested neighborhood to have her prescription filled. It was way beyond weird.”
I went back to the article, wondering where Alex Petrov came in to this. There he was—buried way near the bottom, almost as an afterthought.
Dr. Jared Kennison spoke with reporters inquiring into the student’s disappearance. “Patient confidentiality prohibits me from revealing the nature of the procedure Ms. Lennox underwent,” he said, “but it was a relatively simple outpatient operation that only required an hour. The postoperative went well and Ms. Lennox was given a mild painkiller, sipped orange juice, and engaged in conversation. I found her to be a lovely young lady and my thoughts go out to her family. All of us here at the clinic are praying that Ms. Lennox will be found safe and sound.”
Dr. Alex Petrov, the anesthesiologist for the procedure, confirmed what Dr. Kennison said, explaining that all of Ms. Lennox’s vital signs were normal at the time of her release. “Her parting instructions were to report any adverse effects and to return in a week,” according to Dr. Petrov.
The Milwaukee Police Department and the county sheriff’s department are coordinating searches for the student. Authorities say that they are following up on several promising leads. Tippi Lennox is described as a white female, five foot six inches tall, average build, with brown hair and green eyes. She was last seen wearing a blue parka, jeans, and a striped cap and scarf.
“So what happened to her?” I asked Juju.
“No one knows. She went into that drugstore and never came out.”
“Could she have just run away?”
“There was a theory that she ran off to Hollywood—she’d always wanted to act, and was enrolled in the college’s drama program. A lot of young girls go to LA—you know, thinking they’re going to be stars—but when they don’t make it in films they start doing porn flicks or turning tricks.”
“Do you think that’s what happened to Tippi?”
Juju cocked her head. “No. I think that if she was alive she’d have contacted her family. I think some creep murdered her.”
I searched for more mentions of Alex Petrov, but each article contained basically the same information, that he’d claimed Tippi Lennox was stable and fully recovered when she was released.
“See if there’s video,” Juju suggested.
There were two videos. The first was taken by a camera mounted outside the Kennison Clinic entrance. It showed a girl walking out and getting into a Checker cab. She was bundled up in a parka and was wearing a striped knit cap and a matching muffler wound loosely around the lower part of her face. Was she covering up because of the weather, or because the surgery had been on her face? Collagen injections to her lips? Or maybe she’d wanted that flub of flesh beneath her chin removed? That information had never been released to the public.
The second video, the drugstore’s security tape, showed Tippi emerging from the cab, turning to pay the driver. She didn’t seem woozy or ill. She strode briskly into the store, the lower part of her face still concealed by her scarf, her cap pulled down to her eyes.
The scene switched to a reporter, a young Asian woman who looked as though she was trying to keep her teeth from chattering, doing a live report in front of the drugstore’s doors. “Although the store’s security cameras caught Tippi Lennox entering the store, they did not record her leaving the premises. The store manager reported that they have no record of her attempting to fill her prescription or speak to a pharmacist. Investigators believe the girl may have left through a rear exit that was not under video surveillance.”
Had Tippi sneaked out through the back door, into a dangerous neighborhood? Had she arranged to meet someone there? A boyfriend? A drug dealer? Reading subsequent news articles, I learned that the police had scoured the neighborhood for gang members, sex offenders, drug dealers, and guys who could make a girl disappear in the instant it took to shove her into the back of a van. They’d also questioned a store employee who had a police record for assault and battery.
“But none of this has any connection with Rhonda,” I growled, glancing at the clock. My break was almost up.
Juju dumped a bag of coffee beans into the grinder and turned it on. The grinder went into its usual badly-tuned-motorboat impression. “Maybe Rhonda was a patient at that clinic,” Juju suggested. “Isn’t it possible she met Tippi there?”
“But Jared told me Rhonda was never his patient.”
Juju’s eyebrows shot up. “And you believe him?”
“Well … why would he lie about it?”
“Doctors lie all the time.”
This was true. Dr. Umhoffer, who’d been my pediatrician, always told me that the shot he was about to administer wouldn’t hurt. But it always did hurt. Doctors told you that you might feel some “discomfort” after getting your tetanus booster, when in fact tetanus shots made your arm feel like it was about to fall off.
Then I remembered the thing that had been niggling in the back of my mind for the past couple of days. “Rhonda’s ex-husband told me she’d had a procedure done by ‘that pretty boy Kennison.’ ”
“What procedure?”
“I don’t know. He was half-bagged at the time—maybe he was mistaken.” At the time, I’d been focused on Frederick’s alibi, and hadn’t been paying close attention to his recital of Rhonda’s nips and tucks.
“Call him. Find out.”
“I can’t just—”
“Fine. I will.” Juju consulted the phone book, found the CRS number, and dialed it.
“Yes, hello, this is Ms. Danda from Latte Unlimited,” she said to whoever answered, her singsong fake Thai accent abruptly vanishing, replaced by crisp, National Public Radio–sounding English. “I’m interested in having my business reviewed on your site. Excuse me? No—I’m afraid I must insist on speaking personally with Mr. Cromwell.”
Juju winked at me. I mimed applause.
Juju listened for a few seconds, then thrust the phone at me.
“Hello?” Frederick Cromwell’s rumbling baritone.
“Frederick?” I said. “It’s Mazie Maguire. I don’t know if you remember me—”
“Course I do.” He sounded upbeat, hearty. “How’s it going, Mazie?”
“Fine. Umm, I wonder if I could ask you something personal.”
“What the hell, shoot. I have no secrets.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking of having a cosmetic procedure done, and you mentioned that Rhonda had once had some surgery at the Kennison Clinic—”
“Don’t!” he barked.
“Excuse me?”
“The guy who runs it—that Kennison quack. Don’t let that idiot anywhere near you with a scalpel. My sister is best buds with a nurse who used to work for Kennison. Said this guy couldn’t slap a Band-Aid on his own butt.”
“Seriously?”
“His job is schmoozing the ladies. Most of the surgeries are done by these foreign docs Kennison hires on the cheap. Let’s see, I think there’s a Pakistani, and one from Iran, and—”
“Did Rhonda mention a doctor named Alex Petrov? Russian, maybe Polish?”
“Nope.”
“Did
she know someone with that name?”
“Doesn’t sound familiar. Why do you want to know?”
“It’s complicated. But you’re certain Rhonda had a procedure at that clinic?”
I heard the clink of ice against glass in the background. Sounded like Frederick was getting an early start on the Chivas. “Rhonda was always having stuff done. I lost track. It was a few years back, while we were still married, but yeah—I’m pretty sure she had Kennison do something.”
“Did he screw it up?”
“Well, she never showed up with her boobs on backward, if that’s what you mean. I really can’t remember. Sorry I can’t be more helpful.”
“Did Rhonda know Tippi Lennox?”
“The name sounds familiar. Hold on a sec—that college girl, the one who disappeared? Nah, Rhonda didn’t have any women friends, and she wouldn’t have hung around with someone twenty years younger, anyway.”
I asked him a few more questions, but Frederick started sounding impatient. I thanked him and hung up, discouraged. A real detective would have known exactly what probing questions to ask. Turning back to the computer, aware that I’d already overstepped my break time, I ran the video again, the one of Tippi Lennox walking into the drugstore. I watched it carefully, then paused it, then ran it again, scowling at the screen.
How many things can you find wrong with this picture?
Chapter Twenty-six
Good things come in naked packages.
—Maguire’s Maxims
I was being abducted.
I was trapped in the back of a white minivan. If I tried to resist, my captors warned me, they would strap me to the top of the van like a deer carcass. Like it or not, I was going to Hunk-a-rama, wedged between five over-excited, over-perfumed women passing around a bottle of chardonnay and singing “Take it off, take it off, take it a-a-all off” at the tops of their lungs.
They could kidnap me, I thought; they could force me into a lacey stretch top and short, swirly skirt, they could mash my feet into five-inch heels, but they couldn’t make me have fun. When they were distracted, I’d make my escape. I didn’t have time for frivolous stuff. I had a case to crack, an innocent man to save.
Crazy for You: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance) Page 17
